DarthPuppy wrote:If we are going all EV by 2040, Cali better get cracking on building out the power grid and charging infrastructure. I'm fairly certain our present power grid won't handle converting all of the miles driven in California daily to being powered by the grid. It wasn't that long ago we had rolling outages because the grid couldn't handle summer HVAC needs. Now lets require all movement to be powered by that grid. Sounds legit.

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Oh, I almost forgot, we will need a bazillion batteries so we can keep charging cars when there is some cloud cover. I'm sure there are no environmental consequences of producing that many batteries.

Meh, the "grid" will be fine. Charging an EV isn't that much different from turning on a couple stove burners and nobody seems concerned the world will end if that happens. Stuff gets upgraded and replaced all the time. It won't and doesn't need to happen all at once.

Storage remains the bigger concern. Unfortunately we got into a bad place with coal as a direct result of getting into bad place with nuclear by not advancing to better reactor designs.

DarthPuppy wrote:If we are going all EV by 2040, Cali better get cracking on building out the power grid and charging infrastructure. I'm fairly certain our present power grid won't handle converting all of the miles driven in California daily to being powered by the grid. It wasn't that long ago we had rolling outages because the grid couldn't handle summer HVAC needs. Now lets require all movement to be powered by that grid.

Summer HVAC loads are fairly well matched to PV electric generation. When it is sunny and hot, HVAC loads are high, as is PV generation. About 10 GW of solar have been added in California. Oh, and Enron is now bankrupt. So rolling outages are now much less likely.

How much power is needed for all the passenger vehicles?

The average driver in California drives less than 15,000 miles. At 3 miles per kWh, that is 5000 kWh per year. Divide by 365 and 24, and the average usage of less than 0.6 kW per person. Plus some for TMS in hot or cold weather. Less than 1 kW average per person.

Car charging usually doesn't need to be done at the peak hour, usually can be deferred until night when the grid is less loaded, or until day when the solar power is in excess. New generation capacity isn't needed until the total load (less solar and wind) is more or less constant. Charge at 11 PM to 5 AM, when little power is used. Or between 9 AM and 4 PM, when there is often too much solar power on California's grid.

Of the less than 1 kW per person needed needed, at least 0.5 kW could be supplied by load leveling. The rest might be handled by utility scale solar, at a cost of $2 per watt installed, would need roughly 6 kW added (assuming 1/12 available) or $300 per person per year spent for the next 20 years. Or adding wind or nuclear power plants at a similar cost, if you don't like utility scale solar. Double or more for roof top solar.

Other costs would include smart charging stations or putting the smart charge functionality into cars, adding to some local grid capacities and crushers for all the old ICEVs. Battery storage for charging is mostly useful for peak hour charging, a tiny fraction of charging. All of this is fairly minor. Adding cars to the grid if charging is mostly deferrable, reduces the need to adding battery storage to the grid. Grid stabilization can come from source control, load control, or adding storage.

the vast wilderness of the gas-loving, no EV infrastructure midwest.

There is a reason why that is called "fly over country". But actually, really, it isn't all that way. If they want the business, and they will, they will need to add the infrastructure to support it. I'm not saying nothing will change for the worse. But this is a very solvable problem.

WetEV#49Most everything around here is wet during the rainy season. And the rainy season is long.2012 Leaf SL Red (Totaled)2014 Leaf SL Red

DarthPuppy wrote:If we are going all EV by 2040, Cali better get cracking on building out the power grid and charging infrastructure. I'm fairly certain our present power grid won't handle converting all of the miles driven in California daily to being powered by the grid. It wasn't that long ago we had rolling outages because the grid couldn't handle summer HVAC needs. Now lets require all movement to be powered by that grid. Sounds legit.

Those rolling blackouts were not because "the grid couldn't handle" load. They were a result of manipulation by corporations trying to game the market. It definitely was not legit.

I'm not saying the full conversion will not involve infrastructure improvements but please don't use the actions of corporate criminals to impugn my state.

DarthPuppy wrote:If we are going all EV by 2040, Cali better get cracking on building out the power grid and charging infrastructure. I'm fairly certain our present power grid won't handle converting all of the miles driven in California daily to being powered by the grid. It wasn't that long ago we had rolling outages because the grid couldn't handle summer HVAC needs. Now lets require all movement to be powered by that grid. Sounds legit.

Those rolling blackouts were not because "the grid couldn't handle" load. They were a result of manipulation by corporations trying to game the market. It definitely was not legit.

I'm not saying the full conversion will not involve infrastructure improvements but please don't use the actions of corporate criminals to impugn my state.

Now that PGE and others have tons of Solar to meet their load demands they have no use for more incentives, we solved their problems.

When the tipping point is reached, the politicians don't matter --it's gonna' happen regardless. In my opinion there's already enough research and capital in motion to assure EVs are going to replace ICE passenger vehicles entirely.

Agreed 100%, assuming that by "tipping point" you mean the point at which BEVs will survive on their own no matter what the laws say. IMO, this time around (as opposed to the 1990s) we have already passed that point. I expect unit sales of BEV passenger cars to grow exponentially from here on, at least until they occupy about 50% of sales or perhaps even more. To make the numbers easy, let's say that passenger BEVs are 5% of the market in CA today. Four doublings will get us to 80% of the (current) market or perhaps 65% of some future market. Let's see how reasonable that would be given the current trends.

(I realize that the above numbers are for PEV sales, but they should be in the ballpark for BEVs.)

Even if we ignore the sales numbers from 2011, we see that there were two doublings between the 2012 model year and the 2017 model year. In other words, with unabated growth, we would see four more doublings in BEV sales in about ten years, or by about 2027. That leaves up to about 13 years to eliminate the sales of the last third-to-half of the passenger ICEVs. I have to believe that somewhere along the line most automobile manufacturers are going to find that they need to suspend (or at least cut to a life-support level) their ICEV manufacturing in order to compete in the BEV world.

Nubo wrote:The dependency is on battery breakthroughs so the date is hard to predict.

I see no need for any battery "breakthroughs". Instead, I believe that incremental improvement of Li-ion battery technology is all that is needed to achieve exponential sales growth over the next decade or so.

LeftieBiker wrote:You folks seem to be engaging in magical thinking, at least as regards US EV sales. Until the price of gasoline skyrockets there will be no large jump in sales of BEVs or PHEVs.

No one has proposed a "large jump in sales of BEVs or PHEVs". Rather, we are proposing a steady growth in BEV sales during this transition.

I see no need for any battery "breakthroughs". Instead, I believe that incremental improvement of Li-ion battery technology is all that is needed to achieve exponential sales growth over the next decade or so.

The growth is exponential whether you like it or not. The question is at what rate the future growth of BEV sales will occur.

Another cut is to throw out both 2011 AND 2012. That gets us to a doubling every four years. Then four doublings takes 16 years instead of 10, meaning BEVs pass the 50% point around 2033. That still leaves seven years to eliminate the rest of the passenger ICEVs.

Remember, we are discussing CA in this thread. Auto manufacturers can still sell ICEVs in the rest of the U.S. if there is still a demand there.

LeftieBiker wrote:You folks seem to be engaging in magical thinking, at least as regards US EV sales. Until the price of gasoline skyrockets there will be no large jump in sales of BEVs or PHEVs.

No one has proposed a "large jump in sales of BEVs or PHEVs". Rather, we are proposing a steady growth in BEV sales during this transition.

I'm proposing an enormous jump in BEVs. We are barely into the early-adopter phase of the adoption curve. There will come a period of just a few years where the tech will flash over. And it will not require skyrocketing gasoline prices; in fact gasoline prices may tumble. But battery tech will make ICE passenger cars obsolete regardless. ICE vehicles will join land-lines, the Walkman and Blockbuster, and just as quickly.